'Bursting at the seams'

With small-animal cases more than doubling since the early 1980s and the emergence of new specialties since the building's 1979 completion, CSU's veterinary hospital is being updated to improve work flow and patient care.

Center for Emergency Medicine
and Critical Care plans

Intensive Care Unit: 2,100 square feet (Total cost: $500,000) • Advanced therapies room: Where the hospital’s most-critically ill patients are treated with lifesaving instruments. • Isolation room for specialized care: This space will have an anteroom designed to separate patients with suspected contagious diseases from others in the ICU. • Exclusive cat care room: Special space in which to treat feline patients that may be stressed by the company of dogs, birds and other animals. Urgent Care Center: 900 square feet (Total cost: $400,000) • Room for quiet care: A quiet, private space for pets that are stressed or need time with families while being seen for urgent/emergency care. • Three private, pet-care visitation areas. • Rounds room: All patients will be within view as faculty give small-group lectures and sessions with veterinary students and residents in training. Enhanced visibility means students could watch as animals receive care. Pharmacy (Total cost: $300,000) • While the pharmacy recently received a face-lift with a more modern and accessible front desk, more changes are on the horizon. • Chemotherapy preparation room: Personnel can safely formulate chemotherapy drugs for cancer patients. • Pharmacy consultation room: Here, members of the medical team can discuss medications for pet patients.

Project timeline and donations

• A master planning process, to address the hospital’s entire footprint and associated project costs, is under way. Phase I includes renovation of The Center for Emergency Medicine and Critical Care — the pharmacy, Intensive Care Unit and Urgent Care Center. The intention is to have additional phases more clearly identified by late spring/early summer. • Depending on fundraising success, the goal is to complete the first phase of renovations by the end of 2013. • CSU’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital has launched a campaign to raise a minimum of $1 million in private money to fund Phase I. Matching support will come from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. • The hospital has raised $700,000 thus far, thanks to support from clients and donors, hospital Interim Director Timothy Hackett said. • For more information about donating, contact Judea Franck at judea.franck@colostate.edu or (970) 297-5311, or Kathy Lachenauer at kathy.lachenauer@

colostate.edu or (970) 491-3932. Donors may also visit http://bit.ly/VKjVnw. A permanent site, Advancing.colostate. edu/vthrenovation, will go live soon.

Radiologic technicians Jan Specketer, left, and Lonna Jensen assist Max, a Jack Russell terrier, before the dog received an X-ray at Colorado State University's Veterinary Teaching Hospital on Feb. 1. Max was visiting the hospital's Urgent Care Center for diagnostic work and testing. The hospital is preparing to quadruple the size of the Urgent Care/Intensive Care Unit in the coming months. / Rich Abrahamson/The Coloradoan

A rendering shows plans for the Urgent Care Unit of the Colorado State University Vet Teaching Hospital. / Courtesy of CSU

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Not every white, utilitarian cinder block — cornerstones of 1970s-era architecture — making up the walls of Colorado State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital will fall. But enough will crumble over time to reveal a facility that leaders believe will better reflect evolutions in modern veterinary medicine.

A lot has changed since the 1979 completion of the building at 300 W. Drake Road in Fort Collins. Small-animal cases have more than doubled, from 12,889 in 1983 to 26,384 in 2012. Blood work, an ultrasound and surgery can all happen in one day, rather than over several.

As new specialties — think oncology, oral surgery and dermatology — have emerged and taken root, experts in those fields have “squatted,” taking up permanent residence in all manner of rooms, closets and narrow hallways available. Add to that an uptick in the number of emergency cases coming through the doors each year.

“We just practice veterinary medicine a lot differently now than we did then,” said hospital Interim Director Timothy Hackett, noting that plans are to look at “all corners (of the hospital) to expand.”

Taking a long look at these and other changes, it was decided that razing the current hospital and building new was too costly. Instead, the VTH is readied for a long-awaited, sometimes-delayed series of renovations that, depending on fundraising success, will start in earnest this spring.

Starting small

A focal point within the hospital’s small-animal lobby is the pharmacy, with its recently remodeled front desk. Two front-facing windows allow greater public access, while a counter around back gives students and clinicians room to review prescriptions. Future enhancements include a room in which to safely prepare chemotherapy medications and another for consultations among students and employees.

Just down the hall is urgent care, the equivalent of a human emergency room that’s almost always bustling — sometimes with 10 or 12 back-to-back cases a day.

This single room, splashed yellow and green with Ram pride, is the central hub” the first stop for ailments large and small: dogs with cut paws, peacocks and snapping turtles hit by cars, sick birds and lizards, and even tiny sugar gliders unable to urinate. The Critical Care Unit until a few years ago handled all these cases, in addition to caring for recovering animals.

Just feet away Dr. Sharlee Haas and two senior vet students reviewed how to perform triage on a critically injured dog and other skills.

After the procedure, urgent care nurse Jennifer Hardy consoled Maxx as Haas talked about the future.

“We would have more space to work in,” Haas said of the proposed 900-square-foot urgent care center and 2,100-square-foot intensive care unit.

There would be two, instead of one, triage stations and wish-list equipment to replace the hand-me-downs they have now. Special rooms will separate cautious kitties from crooning canines. Centralized rounds rooms will be shared among employees in urgent and critical care, making for better problem-solving, urgent care nursing supervisor Jocey Pronko said, and windows between rooms will allow faculty to teach students about care as it happens.

A “culture change” will also occur, as a more-efficient footprint makes provides open space and opportunities for pet owners to be in the room more often.

It won’t likely become an open-door policy, Pronko said, where an owner could be there every step of the way, but it could mean they can stand by during blood draws and other less-intensive procedures.

“I think it gives the owner peace of mind,” she said, sitting at a desk in a former-lab-room-turned-workspace two doors down from urgent care. “I think it makes the animal feel better and lets them know this isn’t a closed-door process.”

This is something clients may already be used to, as many private vets in the community already allow this type of interaction, Haas said. And it’s a reality now for the Veterinary Teaching Hospital’s equine owners, who can back a trailer into the facility and stand by as their horse is treated in any number of open bays.

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But could having pet owners in the room mean added pressure for medical practitioners?

“In the end, it won’t look that different,” Pronko said, because hospital personnel are “always” looking out for the best interest of the animals, “period.”

A game of dominoes

The timeline of future renovation phases isn’t yet clear. But experts from different specialties are excited for when their time comes to reorganize, following completion of Phase I.

Dermatology, which solidified as a specialty in the 1980s, has five spaces it calls home: a computer/teaching room kitty-corner to urgent care, a narrow hallway with one desktop computer — in which students, doctors and technicians stand crammed to review cases — and three exam rooms.

The exam rooms are a couple of hallways and two double doors away from the computer/teaching room. That means dogs or cats (or other critters) with yet-to-be-diagnosed contagious skin or ear diseases are walked through the hallways, increasing potential for the spread of disease.

The hospital takes precautions to keep all animals safe and prevent contagion, but having exam, teaching and rounds rooms clustered together is healthier for the whole hospital, said Dr. Jennifer Pendergraft, assistant professor of dermatology.

CSU’s isn’t the only vet hospital looking to exchange its cinder blocks for new spaces and improved efficiency, said Pendergraft, who did her residency at Ohio State University. “We’re all going to have to continually adapt,” as veterinary medicine evolves, she said, and prepare for change — even after this much-desired update.

“We cannot predict 20 years from now what we’re going to need,” she said, her white-coated figure zig-zagging between colleagues and pets walking the hospital’s halls.